


The Dangerous Nature Of Children Who Accessorize

by PatchesIsSorry



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Hogwarts House Sorting, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Luna Lovegood, Book 2: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Hogwarts House Sorting, Hogwarts Second Year, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Luna Lovegood & Harry Potter Friendship, Luna Lovegood Being Luna Lovegood, Luna Lovegood is a Good Friend, Luna/any of the golden trio if you squint, Protectiveness, The Golden Trio, luna makes friends, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:21:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27943691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PatchesIsSorry/pseuds/PatchesIsSorry
Summary: Luna Lovegood was a hatstall, unusual maybe but there were always a few, and for Xenophilious and Pandora’s daughter it would have been surprising if she hadn’t taken a few minutes.Even their talking, wasn’t especially surprising. Some did, especially hatstalls.What was surprising was when the sorting hat made a request of the headmaster of Hogwarts for the first time since Godric had died.Technically speaking there wasn’t a rule against the sorting hat being placed in the temporary possession of a student, but Dumbledore suddenly desperately wished there was.Things were about to get weird.(Former title: Four Miscreants & Associated Accessories.)
Relationships: Hermione Granger & Harry Potter & Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger & Luna Lovegood, Luna Lovegood & Harry Potter, Luna Lovegood & Ron Weasley
Comments: 9
Kudos: 66





	1. Diamonds and dogs? Hats are where it’s at

**Author's Note:**

> This was a random text to my friend months ago, and then it turned into this monstrosity.  
> About midway through I realized I had no plan.  
> This didn’t stop me as much as it should have.  
> In my defense, most of this was written in the wee hours of many many mornings/late nights.
> 
> (I posted this all at once originally by accident so I’m reposting it with it separated out into actual chapters, and I changed the name because I am a fickle god.)

“Hello Mr Sorting Hat, or is it Mr Hat and Sorting is your first name? Or maybe Sorting Hat is your title and you have a completely different name. How would you like me to address you? It’s rude to assume.”

The sorting hat had been his version of alive for a little over a thousand years.

He was bestowed with the wisdom and judgement of four of the greatest witches and wizards of all time and has unerringly sorted hundreds of thousands of young witches and wizards to their house.

In all the minds he had looked in, to decide where someone belonged in the deepest parts of their soul to make a life altering decision for him, he had been hesitant, perplexed, bewildered, flummoxed, flustered, and puzzled.

Never before had he been amazed.  
Never before had someone asked him what he would like to be called.

“I suppose I never thought about it.”

During all the long lonely years without the founders, planning song after song that the children forgot as soon as it was said, he had never considered what he would like to be.

“Don’t you think you should? Everyone should know who they would like to be.”

It was a guileless question, without a hint of mockery or ulterior motive, and in her entire mind not a speck of ill intent to be seen.

No rushing as most ill mannered children try to do, no house she desperately wished to be placed in, despite being a pureblood with generations of Ravenclaws.

In his long tenure, he had seen the minds and lives of countless thousands, the minds of geniuses and idiots, ministers of magic, great wizards of good and evil, and every Weasley for five generations.

It was not a duty he took lightly.

“I think I would like to be your friend.”

He had had a long cantankerous existence, and this is the very first person, since poor Godric and the rest died, whom he has wanted to do more for than his duty.

“I would love to have a friend and you seem like a perfect one. We should still figure out the name thing though.”

A song didn’t need all year to write.  
But who knew how long a name would take.

“Well then friends we shall be.”

He couldn’t see her face due to where his eyes were unfortunately located, but he could feel how happy she was.

There was only one problem. The crowd was getting rather restless and the Hat was more than a little stumped for her house.

She quite truly had many qualities from each house, and had already had too tragic a life for his tastes.  
He wanted to find her a house where she was truly happy.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to do the same for every student that came his way, but there was more pressure when it was his first real friend.  
(He had a very complicated relationship with the founders, and friend didn’t seem to fit quite right.)

Unlike the crowd, his new friend was unbothered by the wait, merely humming lightly and swaying gracefully on the rickety stool.

“How would you like your life to go?”

Legilimency was less all encompassing than most practitioners of it liked to admit.  
It displayed the raw data, and through the Hat’s long experience he was quite good at sorting that raw data, but on the very rare occasions he was this stumped, he took wishes into account.

Usually this was easy since they already had a notion what house they wanted to be in.

Nothing about this though was easy.

“I would like to have friends, you are lovely of course, but I’ve never really had friends before. People tend to find me off putting.”

One of the benefits to his job, was that he knew everybody in each house, and many of their parents, grandparents, and great grandparents.

He knew exactly what those common rooms would look like.

Now he knew her too.  
This was going to be interesting.

“Why then Miss Lovegood I will have to say... GRYFFINDOR.”

How he would manage it he wasn’t sure, but he was going to stick around to see this instead of being stuffed in the headmaster’s office for the year again.

He could reuse a song or two if need be.

____________

Albus Dumbledore was a very smart man. Maybe not as smart as people liked to think he was in order to sleep at night, but certainly far above average.

Not a lot surprised him at this point.

This did.

“What do you mean you want to be able to ‘hang out’ with a student?”

The Sorting Hat did a motion, that if it were a human, probably would have been rolling its eyes, but in the folds of the hat just ended up being rather disturbing.

“I mean I’m tired of being cooped up in your office Albus, and I wish to be put into the care of one Luna Lovegood. You have no need of me during three hundred and sixty four days of the year anyway, and you would be wise to remember how to speak to your elders.”

It was a rather jarring reminder to the hat’s origin and age.  
Faintly, Dumbledore thought, as he summoned a chair to sit in, that the hat would probably make a better Headmaster than he did.

If only he’d take the job.

“But why?”

In all the years he had inhabited this office, the hat had whinged, sang, insulted, grumbled, and sulked, but he had never asked for anything.

Especially not something like that.

Why he should choose to break that streak for the Lovegood girl Dumbledore couldn’t fathom.

It wasn’t often Dumbledore was caught out like this. Being, with as little arrogance as possible, one of the greatest wizards of all time, a master at legilimency, and having a deep hard fought for knowledge of human behavior, he honestly found most of life rather dull. Knowing so much was much more a burden than it was a blessing.

The hat executed another disturbing shrug.

“I like her, she’s my friend, and I have the distinct feeling her life will never not be interesting.”

It was a stunningly simple answer.

And honestly, it made sense.

He was right that they only needed him once a year, and the hat was a sentient being like the rest of them, denying him this would be needlessly cruel in a way Dumbledore was not.

He supposed that the Hat would know what’s best for itself, even if that is to leave himself in the questionable care of the child of Pandora and Xenophilius Lovegood.

There was no reason he could think of to deny this.

So why did he have the horrible feeling he would regrets it?

“I suppose if the child is alright with it.”

Interpreting the hat’s feelings was always hard, his poker face being enhanced significantly by his lack of a face, but Dumbledore had the distinct notion that it was feeling quite smug at the moment.

Somehow, he knew, this decision was going to cause him a headache later.

“Don’t look so grim Brian, I wouldn’t hurt her or anybody else really. It would violate my hattocratic oath.”

Apparently it was going to cause him a headache then.

As well as later.

He was pretty sure he didn’t have enough candy for this.

——————

Each of the golden trio knew loneliness, even if it was in slightly different ways.

For Harry it was the physical isolation of the Dursley’s, never a kind word spoken, barely even hearing his name, and Dudley having made sure he wouldn’t have any friends when he started school, even at Hogwarts his fame blinded people and he really only had two friends.

For Hermione, it was her social awkwardness, never knowing when to shut up according to her peers, and her general preference for books over everything, causing children to sneer and bully about her being a bookworm and a teachers pet, until one halloween in the girls bathroom that was.

For Ron, it was the loneliness in the middle of a crowd, being just another Weasley, and never the interesting one, even to his own parents, Harry and Hermione were the first friends he ever had that didn’t first know one of his family members, that wasn’t constantly comparing him to them.

So when they saw the bright eyed first year, with the sorting hat drowning most of her head, and the wide space around her on the always crowded benches, they didn’t need to have a discussion before heading to sit next to her.

“Hello, it’s Luna right? I think I remember your sorting, is it okay if we sit here?”

Luna didn’t turn at Hermione’s polite question, although the hat did, looking at the three of them warily.

Harry was pretty sure the glare it was leveling at any student who dared to look crosswise at Luna is scarier than Quirrel/Voldemort and Snape combined.

The other students seemed to agree.

“Of course you can, I’ve just been having a lovely discussion with Mr. Hat, (we’re still working on the name) about how the house point system works.”

The Sorting Hat did what looked like a begrudging nod, although since he had no head or chin it turned out very oddly, and the trio warily sat down next to her, the hat swiveling to keep its eyes on them.

Hermione was absently thinking about how hard it must be for hair as she tried to figure out a way to delicately inquire as to why exactly she had a powerful magical artifact on her head.

Harry didn’t bother himself with that too much, and started collecting food.

The entire Great hall seemed to have paused to stare at the four of them, practically holding their breath.

“What about the house points system is confusing you?”

Hermione smacked Ron on the arm for speaking with his mouth full yet again, but Luna just turned her head slightly his way, smiling dreamily.

“The magic of it of course. Since teachers and even prefects change the point score at all times of the day and night, and all over the grounds I’m just wondering how it’s done. I find it unlikely they all just have little notebooks they scribble the changes into when everyone’s not looking, and it does seem to have a rather real time effect on the hourglasses and scores, take Gryffindor’s last minute win last year. (Is it true that all the banners and decorations changed as soon as Dumbledore said it? Because that is quite the feat of transfiguration even for him.) But you see if you or I were to say ‘one hundred points to Gryffindor’, or even any of the other houses nothing would happen. So how does the magic both register the words being spoken wherever they are, and delineate between who’s authorized and who’s not? It’s all very interesting.”

The Hat looked unbearably smug at the trio’s reactions.

Hermione’s brow had been progressively furrowing during her speech, and at this point you could probably stick a whole galleon in it without it falling.

Harry looked a little flabbergasted, but also noticed that Luna didn’t have any food on her plate, and after a few hand gestures and what was either a nod or Luna starting to fall asleep, (he decided it was a nod,) started gathering food for her.

Ron stopped mid chew and looked mildly ill.

He kept looking between Hermione and Luna in a sort of mute horror.

Luna wasn’t paying attention to any of that though, she just took a sip of her pumpkin juice, staring absently at nothing in particular.

It was at that moment, that the owls descended, including Errol, who collapsed on the table destroying everyone’s food, carrying an ominous red letter.

The only one who didn’t jump at the flurry of wings and food was Luna, who only reached out to pet Errol, handing him a piece of bacon.

“Is that a howler? I’ve never gotten to see one up close.”

Whenever Hermione got that look in her eyes Ron made it a point to get as far away as possible.

This was his first time receiving a howler, Molly Weasley liked to do things in person when at all possible, but due to the various exploits of his siblings he knew the danger he was in.

“What am I supposed to do? I can’t open a howler in the Great Hall on the first day of term! They’ll never let me live it down!”

Who ‘they’ was was undecided yet terrifying.

Luna looked up, causing a crisp that landed on her to fall, while still petting Errol who was doing his best to purr, and tilted her head, leveling an enquiring gaze at Ron.

“Do you want me to take it for you?”

The entire Great hall was watching with bated breath at this point and by Fred and George’s end of the table something that looked suspiciously like betting was taking place.

“It’s a howler you can’t take it! It’ll just keep getting hotter and hotter until it’s opened by its recipient.”

Ron was rapidly reaching hysterics, and hyperventilating quite a bit, so Hermione started instructing him on breathing exercises.

It wasn’t going very well.

The Sorting Hat ate a mini quiche that had landed on its brim.  
Harry found himself wondering how that worked and where exactly the mini quiche went.

He’d ask Hermione later, just to keep her on her toes, she didn’t expect Harry to pay that kind of attention. It was a little unfair, but he didn’t grudge it, he hadn’t done much to change Hermione’s mind about him after all.

He was actually quite a curious person, and not stupid by any means, he just didn’t have the same interests as Hermione, and even Hermione must admit the teaching at Hogwarts was a little lackluster. Take that Lockhart bloke from Diagon, Harry had serious doubts about his teaching credentials.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Harry barely held back a snort.  
She made a point.  
Ron and Hermione look at her like she’s daft.

That seemed a little unfair to him.

The last year of his life had been filled with one strange discovery after another, and he knows it had been the same for them, so why they were so close minded about this he didn’t understand.

“Yes I want to get rid of the bloody thing!”

Later Hermione was going to sit down to have another talk with Ron about etiquette.

It’s not like she was expecting him to act like the queen or anything but a little decorum would go a long way.

Luna however, didn’t seem to mind his dreadful lack of tact and just nodded calmly, picking up the letter from the thoroughly besotted Errol, and dropping it into a jug of pumpkin juice.

The pumpkin juice bubbled and steamed for a moment, then stopped.

Luna took a piece of toast from the crook of Harry’s elbow and bit into it.

As one, the great hall erupted.

The Sorting Hat started guffawing and Dumbledore put his head in his hands.

Thus, another great peril cemented a friendship at Hogwarts, and a trio became a quintet.  
(Luna and the hat were a package deal at this point.)

And Dumbledore got the second of many headaches from it.


	2. The First Day Of Classes Is Always So Fun!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The title about says it all.  
> Things begin to get weird.

Gilderoy Lockhart was good at two things, memory charms, and PR, if a surprise was related to those two things, he could deal with it pretty well.

Luna Lovegood wearing the Sorting Hat was not either of those things.

Panic was bubbling up in him all through breakfast, and when she came skipping in to her first class he had the strong desire to run.

Luna or the Sorting Hat alone were unsettling, their eyes just seemed to see everything, and you could never see anything back, but together, the weight of their combined stares, even when they weren’t looking at the same thing somehow, was nothing short of terrifying.

When Gilderoy had had his turn with the Sorting Hat a really-not-that-long-your-numbers-must-be-wrong-time ago, the Hat had rather markedly disliked him.  
He quite narrowly escaped being sorted into Slytherin because the Hat seemed to think that he was a slimy underhanded vain git. (He seemed to say it as well.)

It wasn’t only their frankly disturbing stares though, Gilderoy just couldn’t shake the feeling that even though he committed his crimes long after (but not too long of course) the Hat last looked in his head, that it knew exactly what he had done.

It was merely superstition of course, no one could possibly know the truth, he’d made sure of that, but he just couldn’t help it. The Sorting Hat was such a figure, a legend, and he couldn’t let go of his childhood fear of the seemingly all powerful legendary hat, much like the Muggles’ boogie man.

Despite it being merely superstition, he was going to err on the side of caution with that one (those two?), he wasn’t sure even he could obliviate a hat.

Which is why when Luna Lovegood wandered into class followed by a shell shocked looking golden trio, he didn’t comment on her being only a first year.

Unfortunately, one of the young Slytherins did not have the same discretion he did.

He hadn’t made his entrance yet, maximum dramatic effect required a few more minutes and a healthy amount of students to witness his glory, and so he elected to keep watching and wait this one out.

“You’re in the wrong class Loony or are you really as barmy as your father?”

Luna Lovegood generally didn’t have a problem not paying attention to the bullies that had plagued her entire life, her cheerful indifference of their taunts was actually quite annoying to them, but she had a clear line she would not let be crossed.

Bullying her was unpleasant, but ultimately unimportant, bullying others, especially her father, and belittling the Quibbler she would not allow.

Really it was quite simple.

The only problem was that Draco Malfoy had not had the pleasure of unsupervised conversation with Luna before, and so had never gotten the chance to insult her as he so dearly wished and didn’t know this.

He also did not properly factor in the Sorting Hat, having had barely a moment with him during his Sorting.

Gilderoy was slightly smarter, and had done his research on the Quibbler, (you had to know who you were going to tip off that you’re going to a restaurant with Celestina Warbok or there was no point) and he saw the storm clouds brewing.

He was unsure whether he was dreading, or looking forward to what was about to happen.

Either way he wasn’t planning on closing his eyes.

“DRACO LUCIUS MALFOY YOU ARE A GORMLESS COWARD FROM A LONG LINE OF GORMLESS COWARDS AND YOU WOULD DO WELL TO HOLD YOUR TONGUE.”

The shout was not necessary for him to speak without his legilimency, but it was wonderful for making an impression in a pinch.

The classroom was in chaos, students were muttering and almost ready to flee, Draco was pale, Neville looked about five seconds away from fainting, Harry and Ron were laughing uncontrollably and Hermione’s expression was between disapproval and the hysterical laughter of the boys.

The Hat felt a little bad, he hadn’t had a lot of time with the younger Malfoy during the sorting but he’d seen enough.

The kid had it rough, but he wouldn’t hold with anyone bullying Luna.

Luna smiled a little brighter, and put an origami flower she got seemingly from thin air onto the brim of the Hat, who looked very pleased.

This was not how Gilderoy had planned on making his entrance.

“Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, Third Class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defence League, and five-time winner of Witch Weekly's Most-Charming-Smile Award - but I don't talk about that. I didn't get rid of the Bandon Banshee by smiling at her!”

But a savior and soothing balm to the chaos could work in a pinch.

Since he had no intentions of setting off either the Lovegood child or the Sorting Hat, he felt he could carry it off pretty well.

Almost everyone rushed to their chairs (the female students actually excepting Luna who wandered to a seat in her usual unhurried way) and when the boys finally settled in Gilderoy was ready.

There were some kinks, but he could work with this.

The Hat’s eyes turned from glaring at the young Malfoy to him and Luna’s absent stare looked almost sinister even if it was directed at some cobblestones.

Probably.

The good news was the class had to end sometime.

———————

“She wouldn’t do her transfiguration, called it animal cruelty, and the bloody Hat backed her up on it! Loudly! I thought the students were going to riot and I just know Granger will have a petition about the live transfigurations before the term is out.”

The last time a single student had caused this much complaint at the first staff meeting of the year, it was James Potter.

Wherever he was Minerva was sure he was cackling.

“Do you want to know what she asked me? What I did if one of the students was color blind and couldn’t see the key potion color changes. The Hat spent ten minutes guffawing before I could start the class! Not to even mention the hundreds of galleons of potions ingredients she ruined, she didn’t look at what she was doing once! Even Longbottom was more careful than she was! 

Fillius thought the color blind question was a rather valid point, as with the transfiguration issue, but remained quiet on this in the face of his seething fellow heads of houses.

He personally had had a lovely time with her in class. Once he put on the butterbeer cork necklace she was carrying around to banish the distracting nargles she paid much more attention than anyone else. (Granger excepted but she was a statistical anomaly.)

It was a pity she wasn’t sorted into Ravenclaw.

“Why did she get the Hat exactly? And does anyone know why she’s wandering around taking the second year classes?”

At the Hat’s vocal and deafeningly emphatic protestations about anything he perceived as a slight to Luna the professors had decided to let her have the day rather than try and escort her back to her scheduled class.

The reason she was taking second year classes was actually pretty simple.

Something she would have told them if they’d asked.

During breakfast she had put her schedule down without looking at it, and promptly lost it.

There was an unfortunate incident with a cereal bowl that led to it being vanished by the house elves into the sink along with all the other dirty dishes, and it was now making its way through the Hogwarts plumbing as paper mush.

After breakfast she realized it was missing but found she didn’t care much and just followed the first people who’d been nice to her since she got here. The first people to be nice to her (other than her father) since longer than that but she didn’t like to dwell.

She rather expected Professor Sprout to say something when she got there, and very nearly went up to ask her where she was supposed to be.

But they got there a minute or two late, and the next thing she knew someone was shoving a gardening smock and ear muffs in her hands.

At this point she probably should have said something, but Luna was not an angel despite her appearance, and when Professor Sprout didn’t say anything, despite looking at her oddly, the Hat correctly guessed the reason why, and Hermione was shushed mid lecture to Luna about being in a class she wasn’t supposed to be Luna made a decision.

She decided to see how far this would go.

The second year classes weren’t difficult for her by any means, and everything she said she fully believed, but she probably wouldn’t have said half as much as she did without the Hat’s mischievous encouragement and her natural curiosity egging her on to see how far they would carry this ridiculousness.

She was eleven years old not a dragon for Merlin’s sake, someone anywhere, other than Hermione, should have told her she needed to go to her own classes

All in all the day’s experiments rather conclusively proved her father’s doubts about Hogwart’s education standards.

The Hat agreed, Albus had really dropped the quaffle from what he could see.

A little house keeping was in order for his maker’s pride and joy.

Everyone at the staff meeting was looking at Albus expectantly (excepting Trelawney who was inspecting everyone’s dish ware and muttering about imminent death), he had made himself scarce during the daylight hours as he had expected some problems of this sort, and had yet to contribute anything to the discussion.  
He sighed tiredly, rubbing his hands over his face.

Being the paragon and leader for the light, not to mention Headmaster, was not as glamorous as it was cracked up to be.

You’d think after a hundred odd years someone would step up to take his unfortunately demanding jobs. But no, oh Grindlewald, he got a little evil wizard jr, who stubbornly refused to stay dead, yet is there an understudy for him, who had worked tirelessly for decades? No. He had spent more than seventy years in this castle holding the magical world together on his lonesome and he didn’t even have a pension plan.

That didn’t sound very fair to him, and since according to everybody else he was the arbiter of peace, justice, and the british way, that should hold some weight.

“How did she do in her classes? (Other than you Severus, we all know you’re biased.) Moral objections aside, how was she?”

People had an unfortunate habit of deifying him. Not everything he did had a grand plan, nefarious or otherwise.

He didn’t have some idea that Luna and the Hat taking second year classes would save the wizarding world.

The actual reason was much more pragmatic: the Hat was very loud and very stubborn. Also Luna gave him an odd feeling in his ankles.

So if she was good enough to just take the second year classes if she wanted to, he was planning on letting her.

The professors could talk a big game but it wasn’t their office the Hat was going to be whinging in for the end of time.

“Delightful girl, a bit of an embarrassing crush on me but that’s certainly understandable. I didn’t have any problems teaching her, although that might be due to my natural talent and commanding presence.”

That girl terrified him, as did the Hat, but he would not admit that teaching her (and teaching in general) was a complete disaster for two reasons.  
One: he had a paranoid fear that anything he said would somehow get back to them.  
Two: he was Gilderoy Lockhart Order of Merlin, Third Class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defence League, and five-time winner of Witch Weekly's Most-Charming-Smile Award, he did not have trouble with students and he certainly wasn’t terrified of an eleven year old and a hat.

Lockhart was undoubtedly a complete twat.  
Albus knew this.  
But he couldn’t have Severus teaching DADA and frightening the poor students even more, and no one wanted a cursed low paying job in the arse end of Scotland.

They all complained about Lockhart as soon as it was announced but no one was suggesting a replacement.

Albus’ life was a lot less mystical mastermind than people thought.

He had another migraine.

“She was lovely to me, a real natural talent for charms.”

It was actually quite extraordinary.

Despite her cavalier attitude about spell name and pronunciation, and wand movement, (Miss Granger almost fainted when she saw it) she was near the top of the class.  
So pleasant too.

Her and the Hat.

“Than try to make allowances for her...oddities, and let her keep with the second years.”

There was an immediate uproar.  
Albus’s migraine was worsening.

“You all have classes in the morning, best to get a good nights sleep tonight don’t you think?”

Albus didn’t have class, but he did have a very important appointment with lemon drops and fire whiskey in his office.

The room began to clear with only minimal grumblings. Sometimes being seen as all powerful was handy.

Soon enough only Minerva was left.

He should have known she wouldn’t be fobbed off with the general dismissal.

Instead of the rant about Lovegood he was expecting though, she merely looked at him for a moment, and asked in a gentle voice.

“Why does she have the hat?”

It was a reasonable question.  
If only he had a reasonable answer.

“He said she was his friend, and he wanted to be with her.”

Albus may not be as all powerful as people liked to think, but it was unusual that he was this puzzled.

He felt out of his depth in a way he hadn’t since he was a student.

Minerva looked at him for a long moment, nodded and briskly walked out of the meeting room.

This was going to be a long year.

Who was he kidding?

It was going to be a long seven years.

———————

“You can’t just speak to them like that! They’re professors!”

No, she quite clearly could.  
Whether she should was another matter.  
Though she disagreed on the should as well.

Really it was their fault for being so scared of an eleven year old, that and their horrible class practices.

People will never be in a situation where they see a rat and think ‘oh good the solution to all my problems, I can turn it into a cup’.  
Even if people need to learn how to transfigure between living things and inanimate objects there was no reason children had to do it to their beloved pets.

Hermione didn’t have a familiar and she got a little lab mouse she had no attachment to to do her transfigurations.

The pet thing was needlessly traumatizing. 

“What are you talking about Hermione? She was bloody brilliant! Did you see the color the old dungeon bat turned?”

That was another problem.  
Luna sort of didn’t.  
She was partially color blind, a side effect from her mother’s accident.

That wasn’t quite why she asked though, she could manage her color blindness quite well thank you very much, it was just a valid question.

She could manage, not everyone could, and vision problems, (and other problems) were just as much of an issue in the wizarding world as it was in the muggle, despite what some wizards liked to pretend.  
The refusal to accept that was just ludicrous.  
If more people subscribed to the Quibbler they would understand.

Gathering the most expensive ingredients and tossing them in at will was not related to huge societal issues though.  
Snape was a jerk to her friend.  
End of story.  
(Also it was the Hat’s idea.)

Hermione was looking increasingly apoplectic, and Ron was still going on about the professors faces so Harry decided he needed to step in.

He liked Luna. She was odd, but he had personal experience with being the odd one out, and he liked her particular brand of odd.

“Luna, why did you argue with the teachers like that? And why were you taking the second year classes instead of the first?”

Luna smiled brilliantly at him and rewarded him with a rare moment of eye contact.  
He was the first person to ask.  
Everyone else just yelled.

“Because it was the right thing to do, and because you guys are the only ones who can stand me.”

Hermione and Ron stopped their bickering abruptly, Ron looked rather uncomfortable, and Hermione was close to tears, Harry simply nodded in acknowledgement.  
It was good enough for him.

Luna wasn’t paying attention anymore so she didn’t see any of that.

The Hat was glaring at everyone and everything on her behalf, the effect only slightly ruined by the origami flowers, assorted beads, butterbeer corks, and a live rescued lab mouse decorating his brim.

In a much softer voice than she’d been using before Hermione asked.

“How do you know we’re the only ones who can stand you? Have you tried making friends with the others?”

It was exactly what everyone said instead of helping to her in the first year.  
The realization hit her with a twinge and an unusual realization that she wasn’t quite sure what to do.  
She’d seen how everyone treated her like she had a contagious disease all day, how much of that was because of the Hat or simply Luna she didn’t know. It didn’t matter really, Luna would never give up the Hat anyway.  
But the only thing she could think of to help her with her loneliness, involved breaking the rules.  
This wasn’t a life and death situation like the quidditch match or the philosophers stone last year.

Her instincts were always to follow the rules, to learn everything possible and not be caught up short.

But even stronger than that instinct was her instinct to help people.

Luna was nice.  
Luna might not get a haphazard rescue attempt from a troll to give her friends.

Hermione had no idea what she was supposed to do about that.

“I’ve known most of the girls my age in Hogwarts for my entire life, the wizarding world is a small place and it’s even smaller for an infamously crazy family with well recorded opinions, but they don’t like me very much, they think I’m strange. As for the muggleborns they seem to be frightened of me, why I’m not sure, but that along with the heightened pressure for muggleborns to fit in means that all of them are afraid to talk to me.  
It’s not their fault though, the wrackspurt problem in Hogwarts is to blame.”

People tended to think Luna didn’t pay attention to the things around her.  
This was a mistake.  
Luna does pay attention, she just doesn’t care as much about what does happen.

Hermione had her brow furrowed worriedly again and looked like she was about to say something.

Ron had a bad feeling about how that would go.

Despite her memorized etiquette knowledge tact wasn’t Hermione’s strong suit.

“What were you thinking about for names for the Hat?”

Ron had lived his entire life in a rambunctious and numerous family in a small house.  
He was also the second youngest and well aware of how scary Ginny is.

Luna seemed less likely to be explosively indignant like his family, but that doesn’t mean she couldn’t get her feelings hurt.

He had a notion she felt things much more than she let on.

She brightened up immediately at his question, and everyone was faced with the abrupt realization that she had been dimmed for most of the conversation.

Luna had an ethereal nature that makes everything about her seem murky especially herself, and she had the unfortunate habit of making everyone around her feel like they missed something.

It was usually an accurate feeling.

“Oh that, we decided that already. He is Hatt.”

It was Hat in Norwegian.  
She thought it was fitting.  
Hatt liked it too, but for slightly different reasons.

“You named the sorting hat Hat?”

That was the reason.

Luna turned sharply on Hermione, a slight frown adorning her face.

Harry and Ron wisely decided that their input was not needed.

“No I named him Hatt.”

Hatt never claimed to be a good person. Or even a good hat. (Godric always did used to complain about rain on his hair.)  
He was much too fond of a good joke to have any claims to that.

Ron put a firm hand on Hermione’s arm before she could continue, shaking his head slightly.  
And he thought the twins and Percy were a hard combination to deal with.

Harry fell into step with Luna, ignoring the appraising look Hatt was giving him.

“Why did you decide to name him that?”

Luna liked Harry.  
He asked intelligent questions and hadn’t yelled at her yet.  
While that bar wasn’t exactly the highest, a baffling amount of people couldn’t clear it.  
So she liked him.

Hatt was still reserving judgement, but he was protective like that.

“Well we decided it, not just me, and it’s hat in Norwegian.”

As far as everyone was concerned, there was no difference between when she said hat, and when she said Hatt.  
Not one they could tell anyway.

“Well that’s lovely Luna. Congratulations Hattt.”

Because he was clearly making an effort, Luna refrained from correcting him.

She merely inclined her head in an odd way to acknowledge him, not minding the upset squeaks of the mouse at the new angle.

“Now why don’t we go and study and see if we can find any thestrals?”

Hermione was too excited about someone other than her suggesting they study that she didn’t really register the second part of the sentence.

Harry who had a vague notion of thestrals as being horse like things was curious about how they were supposed to study and find thestrals at the same time.

Ron who had attended her mother’s funeral in itchy dress robes, didn’t think anything of the thestrals and devoted himself to groaning about having to do homework.

By the time Hermione understood the second part of the sentence Luna was already half way to the forbidden forest near Hagrid’s hut, without any books in the dark and barefoot.

Harry started moving first, he’d had enough experience with the forbidden forest, and he thought Luna and Hagrid would like each other.

Ron went along next, he didn’t have a reason but he figured someone else probably did, and there was a chance he could get out of homework.

Hermione sighed and went to grab their school bags from where they’d left them in the library.

Madame Pince yelling at her was one of her worst nightmares and maybe they could still get a little studying done.

It would be nice having a friend who actually cared about their studies.  
Even if that led to some...unconventional displays.

She had a fair point about the animal thing too, as well as the potions.  
She’d have to do some research about it.

Luna going to second year classes with them should be fine, the teachers didn’t say anything about it after all.

More importantly, she didn’t want her to be alone like she was for those first few lonely months.

It had been a busy day.

But Hermione was inclined to believe the new school year will be a good one.

As long as she could keep Hagrid and Luna far away from each other of course.

With Hagrid and Nesbit and Fluffy last year, and Luna with her...Luna-ness, she felt like a friendship between them would involve a lot of well meaning harm.

Better hurry up before he got the idea to show off.

——————

Watching Luna concentrate was one of the most terrifying things Harry thought he had ever seen.

Including Snape and Voldemort.

It was like Fred & George planning a prank, Ron playing chess, Hermione taking a test, and Dudley at a buffet rolled into one.

She didn’t change anything really.

Her brow didn’t furrow like Hermione, she didn’t bite her lip like Ron, turn red like Neville, or worry with her hair like Harry.

But there was a palpable difference in the air when she did it.

How much of that was magic, and how much was Luna he didn’t know.

He also wasn’t sure it mattered.

She had picked some hairs up around Hagrid’s hut while eating one of his rock cakes, a feat which still boggled their minds, and calmly requested Ron hand her his wand the next morning at breakfast.

Then she started doing something.

Tying the strands and winding the wand through them in ways that he would swear weren’t possible, just like how the strands and the wand seemed to pass through each other at times.

When she was finished she handed the wand back to a stunned Ron, a lattice of unicorn hair holding the break together covering it like lace.

The spell was broken as sounds of the Great hall filter back through and Ron finally closed his mouth.

Luna started putting danishes on her toast.

Ron did a wingardium leviosa (he’d learned his lesson on that one pretty thoroughly last year) on a goblet and his wand performed perfectly for the first time since its unfortunate run in with the whomping willow.

If anything it was probably better than before.  
It had always been Charlie’s wand more than anything else and he’d always had the sense it was rather disgruntled with him as a master.

Hermione was the first to collect herself as usual.

“Where did you learn to do that?”

Luna blinked, looked up, and finally noticed the looks on their faces.

“My mother was very interested with wandlore as well as spell crafting before she died, she was a wonderful researcher, except for with that last spell I suppose.”

Luna had always picked things up quickly.  
Especially where her mother was concerned.

She hadn’t done anything with it since she died, it never felt right, but Ron needed help.

She wouldn’t let any missish notions stop her from helping her friend.

Confident she had explained everything Luna turned back to her carefully constructed breakfast, listening absentmindedly to Hatt’s chatter, an interesting mix of praise for her help with Ron and censure for what he deemed an unhealthy breakfast.

So she missed the matching looks of concern and pity about her casual mention of her mother’s death.

Even Harry, used as he was to pitying looks and useless condescending platitudes, had one, wasn’t sure how to stop it really.

He never knew his parents, and while being an orphan was unpleasant to say the least, he had no memories of his parents.  
It was a double edged sword of having nothing to hold on to, and not having to remember what he lost, but on days like today he was okay without it.

Hatt noticed their frozen faces and without pausing in his diatribe about how breakfast was the most important meal of the day, pointedly glared (somehow at all three of them at once) until Ron made a comment about quidditch and normalcy was restored.

That is until Luna started trying to explain the Wrackspurt problem to a curious Hermione.

She was confused, and more than a little bit skeptical, but a little more than a year ago she would have thought the same thing had someone tried to explain to her about magic, so she kept an open mind.

Even Ron and Harry were drawn into it after Hermione firmly told them their quidditch debate had gotten too rambunctious.

————————

Malfoys were not cowards, despite what some wayward accessories seemed to believe.

Malfoys simply had wonderful self preservation instincts.

Which is why when the Slytherin quidditch team came across the golden trio plus Ludicrously terrifying Lovegood and the Social suicide Hat, he did not cower.

He merely gave his team captain the respect he deserved and didn’t lower himself to the level of Potter’s rabble, while not drawing attention to himself in the back of the group because he was so important that he was trusted and needed to protect the team’s back from any trickery not limited to the team itself.

After all, he had already sent a letter to his father demanding something be done to stop the handling of a precious (if uppity) Hogwarts artifact by someone who was clearly insane so there was no reason he needed to sully himself with bandying words with them.

Or in fact, be near them or speak to them at all.

He was not afraid.

Malfoys didn’t get afraid.

Malfoys did fall back to strategize when necessary.

He was a Malfoy.

He was perfectly fine.

As long as Luna stayed away from him.

Far away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had way too much fun writing all the teachers.  
> Also I don’t know where my headcanon of Flitwick being the Jerry Gurgich of Hogwarts came from but I will defend it to my dying day.


	3. Snakes And Stones May Break My Bones...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Halloween is a fun carefree time for all.

The thing was, Luna didn’t demand people hear her, not in the way Snape, Lockhart, or even Dumbledore did.

She simply spoke and offered people an opportunity to listen.  
Whether they took it or not was on them.

For all her loudness she was really quite quiet.  
Which had its own set of pitfalls.

Which was where Hatt came in.

Hatt had plenty of knowledge, thoughts and opinions, but he had no real willingness to share any of it with the world, as far as he was concerned if people didn’t know something that was their problem.  
It contrasted greatly with Luna’s worldview. 

But Hatt could get peoples attention in a way Luna could not, or would not, do, he didn’t need to have anything to say to make sure people committed it to memory.

Combined, they were nigh unstoppable.  
So for Hermione, who could only get two people to really pay attention to her and even then only occasionally, Luna and Hatt’s ways of getting people to listen both impressed, and completely baffled her.

When Hermione was confused, she did research, so she studied Luna and Hatt, took out every book on psychology in the library, (a shockingly small number) and generally studied every aspect she could think of, only to become even more baffled.

It took a while for her to work up the courage to directly ask them about it, Hatt’s lazy glare and Luna’s dreamy stare, that never seemed to be quite looking at what it was supposed to be, were a formidable combination even to someone who’d faced trolls and chess pieces and headmasters.

“Why did you put me in Gryffindor sir?”

She was working her way up to it.  
She’d always been curious about it anyway.

Even last year during the philosopher’s stone incident she’d never felt really brave.

Resigned was more like it.

And afraid, for her friends, for the school, for getting in trouble by breaking curfew, by anything and everything really.

“It takes guts to tell people they’re an idiot, especially when you’re right, and remember, I don’t make mistakes. So if I said you were a Gryffindor, that’s what you are.”

Hatt kind of liked her, not that he’d admit it.

She was a Gryffindor through and through, but smarter than most of the idiots he sorted into that house put together.

He was keeping a wary eye on her to make sure she didn’t give into her knee jerk impulse to disregard Luna and her theories, but she hadn’t crossed the line yet so he was okay.

For the most part.

“I don’t see why we had to go to the ruddy thing.”

Ron he had a little more trouble with.  
Godric was laughing wherever he was.

He had had more of an evil sense of humor than anyone liked to remember.

He would have loved their faces when they walked in and the smell hit them.

It was nice to catch up with some of his friends though.  
(You couldn’t spend as much time as he had with ghosts being his only company to not make friends, even if half of them were annoying gits and the other have were unbearable gits.)

“Because he invited us and it was polite, it was also fascinating and Luna wanted to go.”

Ron loved his friends, he really did, even Luna in all her strangeness, but being friends with them was a lot of work.

Like going to a party full of ghosts and rotten food instead of the lovely well lit halloween feast.

Or being stuck holding a magical hat while Luna and Harry went to the bathroom (he was a gentlehat not a peeping Tom) and Hermione chatted with him like it was perfectly normal.

If they didn’t hurry up they’d miss the entire feast.

If he was best friends with Seamus and Dean he’d probably be able to get food.

But no, this is who he’s friends with and he’s going to miss one of his favorite parts of the school year because they’d made those faces.

“Does anyone else hear that weird voice?”

For once, Hatt, Hermione, and Ron, were completely in sync as a feeling of dread descended on them in the completely silent corridor.

Luna was delighted.

“Ooh, voices how exciting, what are they saying Harry?”

She was well aware that this could mean he had something seriously wrong with him.

She was also aware the world was a very strange place, and so she put her mind reading hat back on and looked at Harry with an expectant, but placid expression.

Hatt was a little more concerned, but the frighteningly skimpy, hundred pounds soaking wet, four foot nothing, boy-who-lived-to-argue with-authority-figures, did not strike him as a direct security threat.

If he was barmy, that would be unfortunate, but Luna could take him if necessary.

Harry looked queasily between Hatt’s accessing stare, Hermione and Ron’s dual looks of horror, and Luna’s calm smile.

He’d really hoped that Dobby’s visit, the platform nine and three quarters malfunction, and the flying car debacle, was going to be it for his school year problems.

Things were not looking good for that one.

“It keeps going on and on about letting it letting it kill and eat something, because it’s hungry? It’s getting farther away though, it’s coming from the ceiling somehow, maybe a stray ghost?”

Her father had been right when he promised that she would have fun at school.

This was fantastic and they were only a month in.

Imagine what they could get up to in a year?

(It was that same thought that was keeping up half the Hogwarts staff.)

“Well let’s go then, we wouldn’t want to miss whatever it is would we? It sounds interesting, and Ron I have some food in my room for you.”

It was always handy to have extra food.

It was eery how well Luna could read people.

People tended to think she couldn’t, she could, it didn’t affect her behavior a lot, but she could do it.

She loved her friends though, and she wanted them to be happy, she also wanted to investigate the strange voice only Harry can hear, but she’s always been an excellent multitasker. 

So she held out her elbow, linked arms with Harry, and started skipping in the direction he said the noise was coming from, Hermione and Ron trailing behind.

Hermione was beginning to think she might have a little veela in her.

It would make sense.

More sense than the way she made ridiculous things seem reasonable so much of the time.

——————

Severus Snape was not a kind man, or a good one, he knew this and had accepted it, his one redeeming quality was his patience.

His patience was running a little thin on the ground at the moment.

It was barely two months into the school year and he already wanted to tender his resignation and say to heck with saving the wizarding world.

He’d made a resolution this year to be nicer to the Potter brat too.

He was tired of all the pitying and disappointed looks everyone gave him, so this year he’d decided that he’d treat Potter the same as the other students.  
Which granted wasn’t saying much, but he never claimed to be a saint.

Of course he had to ruin that like everything else by arriving at the school using a stolen and illegally altered car and crashing it into a valuable tree with some cock and bull explanation about how the platform which had been used for decades and hundreds of other students successfully made it through that very day had ‘malfunctioned’.  
Really, how stupid did he think they all were?

Then there was the Lovegood child and that infernal hat bobbing along without a care causing chaos at every turn.  
Obviously Potter had to befriend her (them?) and start actually listening to her.  
Seriously, he picked one person (besides Weasley and Granger) to give any real respect to and it was bloody Luna Lovegood?

So by the time it was the Hallowe’en feast and Potter and his band of ruffians were standing in front of a large threatening message painted on the wall, his feelings were less than charitable.  
Aggravated would fit better.

“Enemies of the Heir, beware! You'll be next, Mudbloods!"

He really did love his godson, but he was one of the most idiotic persons he had ever had the ill fortune to meet.

And that included Trelawney, Longbottom, and a host of Weasley’s.

That boy had a fundamental lack of understanding of what proper times and places were.

Even after what was reportedly quite a failure last time he attempted to bully Lovegood and company he was trying again.

Not to mention shouting a slur in the middle of the hallway with dozens of students and faculty hearing it.

Even Snape couldn’t save him from the punishment that would reap.

Argus was ranting and raving about his stupid cat, and the hallway was in uproar because of Draco and the quintet of terror over there and Snape could just hear Albus explaining to him that he needed to spend yet more of his limited free time in trying to wheedle anything useful out of Lucius and so he was at the end of his rope.

“Everyone shut up, especially you Filch. You four miscreants and associated accessories, explain yourselves. Now.”

Hatt, who had been gearing up for a rather long and loud tirade against the school as a whole but specifically the Malfoy punk turned his creepily sharp not quite eyes on Snape.  
The school as a whole but specifically the Malfoy punk and the emo prince of the dungeon would take another minute so he could really hit them where it hurt.

Luna, who had already determined the writing on the wall was not blood (wrong color and consistency) was trying to determine if the color was more vermillion or burgundy, and had thoroughly checked out of the conversation, much to the irritation of nearly everyone.

Harry, Hermione, and Ron, were in remarkably similar states of shocked purgatorial panic that was making doing anything extremely difficult.

In an odd distant part of Harry’s mind he had the feeling that Hatt and Luna could take care of it anyway.

Malfoy was slowly looking around the room and realizing he might have been a trifle rash.  
This one was going to be hard to explain to father.  
Prejudice Lucius was on board with, inopportune public outbursts less so.

Lockhart was dedicating himself to being as small and unobtrusive as possible. It wasn’t exactly in his skill set, and usually he would be in front spinning up a storm and getting his photo taken, but Lovegood and the beastly hat were up there so he was choosing a different tact.

“We were all at Nearly Headless Nik’s death day party, we were headed up to see if we could still get some food from the feast, we got a little off track, saw the flooding, and went to see if everything was all right. You lot came in and started hurling insults.”

He quite dearly wished to ream every single last one of these imbeciles, but unlike Malfoy he recognized the time and place for such things. Mouthing off at the moment would only hurt the children.

Yelling could come later.  
Not too much later however.  
He had a few bones to pick with dear headmaster Dumbledore and his cronies.

“That’s a lie! They killed my cat!”

Dumbledore had a headache.  
Not only was the chamber of secrets open again, but of course Potter, Lovegood, Granger, Weasley, and the hat would be at the center of it.

That group attracted more trouble than a hippogriph at a kneazle show.

He knew Argus shouldn’t be employed at a children’s school, but he just couldn’t help but feel bad for the poor squib.  
His discussions of torture were getting uncomfortably frequent though.

Perhaps the fact that he discussed torture at all should have been a red flag in the interview process.  
Alas, hindsight’s twenty twenty.

Instead of commenting on the imbroglio of accusations and vitriolic remarks, he took a look at the cat.

He could just hear the howlers now.

Oh how he wished for the days when his biggest problem was the Weasley twins.

“Mrs. Norris is not dead, merely petrified.”

This was not good.  
The water was ruining his slippers he was sure of it.

“The kids still did it! They did it because they saw I was a squib! Rotten little gits. The hat’s covering for them I tell you.”

Oh that was what that thing in his office had been about.  
They honestly had mostly forgotten about it.  
(Ron and Harry had had kind of a busy term.)

Filch was rapidly approaching a mental breakdown of epic proportions.

And that was saying something given his usual mental state.

Not even counting his relationship with Mrs. Norris that frankly Snape didn’t want to know anything about.  
That way lay madness.  
The children had also clearly not done this.

Snape decided to disregard all of that.  
(It’d been a busy term for everybody.)

“You’re telling me you trust me to go through the minds of every student in this school, determine who they are fundamentally as people, and then change their life irrevocably with that, but you don’t trust me to be a reliable witness for four children against a crime that they had no motive nor means of committing?”

Any idiot could do a petrificus totalis but a real petrification like that one required a whole lot more.

Also they had a bevy of ghosts to attest that they were at the death day party not twenty minutes ago.

Honestly if they would all apply a smidge of common sense to the things they said so many things would be easier.

This would all go much faster if Hatt would fess up what he knew about Sally’s pet, (pun intended), project.

It wasn’t much, but he and Sally had been buds.

When Godric, Rowena, and Helga, were getting too sanctimonious they would drink together.

Or Sally would drink, and Hatt would sit there and whinge with him.

But he wouldn’t give this lot of hoodlums the satisfaction.

Luna and her gang were smarter than the rest of them put together anyway.

At this point everyone (except Luna who was still debating colors) was looking at Dumbledore expectantly.

He hated this job.  
(He’d really loved those slippers.)

“Filch, madame Pomfrey will take care of Mrs. Norris. Malfoy, fifty points from Slytherin and two weeks detention, we don’t tolerate things like that here. Prefects, lead your students back to the dormitories in an orderly fashion. You fou-ive, my office, three o’clock, I’ll give the password to you at lunch. Everyone, disperse.”

After a moment everyone started doing as they were told, helpfully herded along by a stern look from Mcgonagall.

Did he still have any firewhiskey left?  
Maybe he could bum some from McGonagall.  
She looked like she could do with some drinking too.

Snape looked like that too.  
But he wouldn’t be invited.  
He had work to do and was a really sad drunk.

Luna having settled that it was indeed vermillion, nodded once firmly at no one, and started skipping along with the Gryffindor group, dragging a nigh comatose Harry along with her by the elbow.

She didn’t touch Hermione or Ron, but they get pulled along all the same somehow.

The former golden trio were all still rather paralyzed but Luna wasn’t concerned.

They seemed to get like that a lot.  
It was okay though.

She had food in her room.

All was well.


	4. Late Night Snacks Are Educational Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermione needs to visit the library, people need to start telling Harry things, people need to stop telling Ron things, and Luna embroiders.  
> If Hatt had a head he’d have a headache.

All was distinctly not well.

“There really is a chamber of secrets? And it has some kind of creature in it? Do you know what it is?”

He liked Granger.  
If Granger didn’t figure out a way to get her nails on a chalkboard, mermaid above water, screeching voice to lower quite a few octaves he would unfortunately have to figure out a way to kill her.

Maybe he could eat her.

Really slowly.

“Hermione dearest do try not to yell, you’re upsetting the unicorns.”

As far as anyone could see, there were no stray unicorns in the abandoned common room in the middle of the night.

Hermione still stopped yelling.

Luna had this way about her that made it seem necessary.  
It was highly disturbing.  
To her at least.

To Ron it was less disturbing.

He had no idea what she was on about half the time, but he didn’t have any idea what Harry and Hermione were on about half the time either so that didn’t bug him too much, and he found her influence and easygoing personality riveting.

She could do just about anything.

How? He wasn’t sure. Wasn’t sure he wanted to know either.

She was his friend, she kept everyone from yelling most of the time, and she’d introduced him to a fascinating card game called hearts, at which she was remarkably good at.

Add that to her heroism with the howler, his wand, and her calm acceptance of all the bizarreness of well...everything, and she was firmly ensconced in his good graces.

Whether she was particularly trying for that, or had really noticed it at all was uncertain, it was part of her charm as far as he was concerned.

She was patient too, a rare quality.

While he didn’t have patience for silly things like schoolwork, chores, or potentially life threatening situations, he did possess a good amount of it for other things, the important things, and she was practically the only one in Gryffindor he could wrestle into a chair long enough to play a good strategy game or two with.

She was an enigma, an unknown on the board, a wild card, a deus ex machina, a dark horse, and best of all, she was on his side.

If she said that Hermione’s yelling was upsetting the unicorns, he was pretty sure they were.

Knowing why simply wasn’t necessary.

He didn’t say any of this of course, he was still eating the food she’d squirreled away, and it wasn’t necessary yet.

“Everybody calm down now, we’re all friends here. Hatttt, you said that you were friends with Salazar Slytherin? Do you have any idea what this creature could be? Where?”

Harry was reasonably sure that he was not saying the name right.

Luna smiled glowingly at him and handed him a silver button as Hatt winked though, so he figured he was doing alright.

It had been a long day.

Luna had managed to steal a quantity of treacle tarts however so it was rapidly getting better.

Or it was the next day now he supposed.

But still, the death day party had been odd, and everything after that just plain uncomfortable.

It was also yet another anniversary of his parents death, and he was never quite sure how to feel about that.

There would always be an ache for his family, halloween or not, and most of the time he had more important things to worry about during halloween, like trolls, strange voices, petrified cats, and even just finishing Dudley’s costume to the Dursley’s standards.

“No, Sally always was a cagey fellow, but he wanted to make sure the school would be safe and saw Rowena, Helga, and Godric’s plans as a danger to that safety, and he liked making contingencies within contingencies.”

Hermione bristled visibly at Hatt’s casual tone and familiar nickname, much to the anxiety of Harry and Ron.

It wasn’t that they didn’t love Hermione, they did, or that they didn’t appreciate her...fervor for things she cared about, it was just that it was hard to manage Hermione on a righteous anger kick, and she often was.

Unfortunately the righteous anger wasn’t always quite as justified as she thought originally, and so it tended to make everything awkward.

They would all happily fight to the death for her, well maybe not happily, (they didn’t have a death wish in particular) but they’d do it, her exercising a little more judgement on what those fights were however would be appreciated.

Luna and Hatt were aware of the sudden mood shift and the almost crackling aura around Hermione, but Hatt didn’t care much and more so didn’t see sense in worrying about whatever it was she was clearly gearing up to say until she said it, and Luna knew that this was Hermione and Hatt’s problem and they needed to deal with it themselves.   
Plus she was mentally writing a few quibbler stories, trying to figure out a way for her to switch rooms (her roommates were not as openminded as her father had hoped they’d be), and pondering a way to sort out the unpleasant business with the chamber of Slytherin and Harry hearing voices.  
So her mind was suitably occupied at the moment.

“Why exactly were you on terms of such friendliness with Salazar Slytherin of all people, as to merit him speaking to you of his most prized secret?”

When Hermione got angry she got wordy, and she did the most unusual thing where without raising her voice she could give off the distinct impression of having yelled.

Something arch and indefinable, a clear warning sign.

Hatt was not much for warning signs.

“If you think that was his most prized secret you’re daft. Sally had loads of schemes in his back pocket this one probably didn’t even rate in the top ten.”

This was perfectly true, while the chamber was one of his more expensive backup plans, it was not nearly his most prized.

The only reason he ever visited it other than a cursory look over to make sure everything was in order and he didn’t have to hex some wayward contractors was to say hi to the basilisk.

(He’d grown quite fond of the fellow.)

It was all perfectly true, it was also truly terrible timing and phrasing as Hatt was beginning to gather by the disapproving silence covering the room.

Luna wasn’t paying much attention but she did mentally admonish him to play nice, Hermione did have good reason to be upset by blood purism after all, and she was more delicate than people realized.

(It was the hair, nargles liked to nest in hair and her bushy curls were just the kind they liked best.)

Hatt, sighed and gave as much a shrug as he could being a hat.

“Look, while my felt may be Godric’s, a fourth of Sally is in there too, along with everybody else of course, and we talked.  
The thing you have to understand is that Sally was a complicated guy. I’m not defending blood purists, it’s just...he lost his whole family to a mob, and Godric, and Helga, were all for coming out to the world, not just accepting muggleborns, and with the ignorance and violence everywhere Sally didn’t have a lot of faith in that going well.”

It was all very dramatic.

“He was a hurt man struggling in a world that had condemned him and everyone like him, while dealing with Godric, Rowena, and Helga who themselves had their own issues. The appropriation of him as a pioneer to the pure blood cause is largely unjust.”

It was also a thousand odd years ago and the muggles weren’t exactly the people you wanted to have over for tea, but he wasn’t going to go into a whole history lesson to try and fix lifetimes of biased books and Binns’ dreaded droning.

He didn’t want to be pouring his heart, so to speak, out to Granger anyway.

He liked her well enough but she was a bit high maintenance for his taste, the only reason he was doing this was because Luna cared for her.

Hermione tilted her head, an investigative gleam on her eyes. This was something she could do.

Research.

Social justice crusades, while rewarding, required too much charisma and general knowledge of human interaction for her to be truly comfortable with it.

If Salazar Slytherin has been wronged by history, and Hatt didn’t seem to have a reason to lie to her, besides it did always strike her as odd that three of the supposed smartest and most powerful witches and wizards ever were friends with a genocidal maniac, then she’d go about clearing his name.

Most people couldn’t tell the difference between that, and a social justice crusade, but Hermione could.

Social justice crusades, the way she understood it anyway, were finicky things, they required moral arguments and winning over opinion based on little more than a sense of right and wrong.

Salazar Slytherin however, that was facts.

She could research, organize, prepare, and then strike, no morals, no grey area, no opinion, no room for interpretation.

Nothing could topple her from the mountain of actual knowledge.

Harry and Ron were looking at the new expression on her face with a kind of awed terror.

It wasn’t one they recognized per say, but they had the good sense to recognize that this one was going to be trouble.

Ron was not sure how he was supposed to keep all of them alive to graduate.

Hatt was having similar thoughts.

Before either of them could change the subject Hermione had one more question.

“Why didn’t you explain any of this before? Isn’t that what the song is for?”

Actually it was what Binns was ostensibly for.

Ya know, history and all that.

His job was to make a couple of nervous firsties who’d heard tales of trolls and tests relax a little, and if they learned something vague about house structure that was just a bonus.

“It’s hard to convey nuance in a five minute rhyming song meant mainly for eleven year olds.”

He had all year but no matter how much time you have ‘people in good faith having philosophical disagreements stemming from wildly different backgrounds’ was hard to get to rhyme properly.

And Dumbledore was horrible at rhyming so it wasn’t like he was much help.

The trio had to admit (Luna had never doubted him), the hat had a point.

Hatt raised a felt eyebrow at Hermione’s expression, (she was mentally going through the library and what books/sections would be a good place to start) but turned to look at Harry.

He wasn’t as young as he used to be, and wanted to get a good nights rest before the meeting tomorrow.

“You said you could hear it? What did it sound like?”

That...was a good question.

Harry paused, his brow furrowing.

Echoey? Slimy? Like it crawled into his soul and pulled out all the worst bits? Pure unadulterated evil? Hair stand up on the back of your neck unnerving? Like he’d been bathing in Malfoy’s hair gel? What buffet tables felt when Dudley and uncle Vernon saw them?

He opened and closed his mouth a couple times, making frustrated noise in the back of his throat, and finally Luna, who was working on some kind of embroidery, (no one was sure where she’d gotten it from,) spoke, still embroidering.

“Why don’t you put on Hatt for a minute, he’s a legilimence he’ll be able to read it from your head. It’s either that or we find a thesaurus.”

Sadly she didn’t have one with her.

She’d have to ask her father to send one, a good thesaurus was handy to have.

Hatt started cackling at Luna’s matter of fact suggestion, not helping his case to a recalcitrant Harry not sure he wanted someone (or somehat) in his head.

But he had already been poking around in there last year he supposed, and Luna wouldn’t let anything bad happen to him, much less suggest it.

Plus he really was having trouble describing it and he didn’t have quite the same enthusiasm for thesaursus’ as Hermione did.

Hermione had in fact perked up considerably at the mention of one.

She knew she liked Luna.

Harry nodded hesitantly.

Luna paused in her embroidery, it was a crumple haired snorcack sitting next to an otter, long enough to gently lift Hatt from her head and onto Harry’s, miraculously not spilling the large collection of knick knacks that had gathered on the brim.

Ron hadn’t seen the mouse in a while, although there was quite a lot on the hat, including a raspberry danish if he wasn’t mistaken.

He figured there were pretty even odds on the hat eating the mouse, (still not sure how that whole process works,) and Luna just having released it somewhere.

He’d ask later, everyone seemed a bit preoccupied at the moment.

It would be nice to be able to do something though, Ron had three things he did when he was seated for more than five minutes, fall asleep, play chess, cards, exploding snaps, or any strategy game really, with whoever was willing, and zone out and start thinking about quidditch while fidgeting in a way that his entire family has assured him was the single most annoying thing in the world.

Maybe Luna could teach him how to embroider, that would help pass the time when Hermione and Harry were off doing their big thinking.

It wasn’t that he didn’t think about things, he did, he was just more active. Pragmatism rather than philosophy ruled his thoughts, and he thought better when he was doing something.

Sometimes his head felt like it was at war with itself, but if he could trounce someone at chess than it kept enough of his head occupied to let the rest of it alone.

He couldn’t see why embroidery couldn’t do the same as chess.

Chess was a little less fun than before anyway, bad memories.

Hatt, who had spent a minute sifting through the prepubescent angst that was Harry’s mind, (he’d have to have a talk with Dumbledore about those relations of his, Luna would be so upset if her friend was forced to keep with them as they were,) his face going through a range of expressions that were thoroughly odd to see on a hat, broke into a large, ominous to everyone but Luna, grin, and started cackling again.

A few of Sally’s more drunken mumblings were beginning to make sense.

Brian wasn’t gonna be happy about this one.

Ron was reasonably unnerved by the hat, in general but particularly now, but he picked him up carefully off Harry, still cackling, and put him back on Luna, who rewarded him with a bright smile and an interesting feather she’d found.

The hat creeped him out, but he was much better off hanging with Luna than anyone else and Harry was beginning to look decidedly uncomfortable by the ancient hat swallowing his head’s ominous cackling.

Hatt started shaking his head, or doing what head shaking someone could do when they were a magically animated hat, still chuckling slightly.

“I can’t believe that thing’s still kicking around. I thought Sally was talking out of his ar-ear, when he said how long it would live.”

Under the circumstances he was rather proud of his save.

It all made a lot of sense, he was somewhat embarrassed he hadn’t figured it out further.

Sally had a real thing for snakes, that bit was not exaggerated by history, what else would he use to ‘protect the school’ than the king of them?

It also explained why he spent that week smelling like a swamp and refusing to eat eggs.

Hatt had just thought he was on a weird diet.

“What’s still alive?”

Everyone had heard his slip, but Luna didn’t care, Harry was preoccupied on the whole ‘chamber of secrets’ thing, Ron thought it was funny, and Hermione realized that he wasn’t used to interacting with children, and was infinitely curious about what it was he had learned so let it lie.

She also wanted to stay on his good side so later he could answer her questions about the founders, Salazar in particular.

“It’s a basilisk, should have figured it out from it being related to Sally and the petrification, but we all have off days. Don’t ask me where it is, who’s running it, or why it’s happening now though, that’s past my time. Oh also, Harry’s a parselmouth, who knew right?”

Another thing he probably should have known already, but in his defense it wasn’t like he was looking for it before and peoples heads were very crowded, you can’t get everything in five minutes.

Ron, more observant than people ever thought, wondered when Harry had become Harry to Hatt.

Hermione was Granger, he was Weasley, and Harry had been Potter, to him.

It was little, but the change felt significant somehow.

The Hat was an interesting specimen.

One underestimated too often.

He had a feeling he knew more than he liked to let on.

Hatt could tell that Weasley had caught on to his new familiarity, but he was keeping his mouth shut so far so he wasn’t going to roll out the threats just yet.

It wasn’t that he liked Harry much more now than he did earlier, he was pretty much apathetic towards him, he was only his concern in so far as in regards to Luna, but he didn’t dislike him, and from what he could see he’d had enough dehumanization in his short life.

He understood why Luna was friends with these three, yet he couldn’t help but wish she had picked some less depressing and trouble prone ones.

Then again it wouldn’t be Luna if she had.  
The girl had a type.  
She was friends with him after all.

Her dating was going to be a nightmare.

“He’s a what?! How come you didn’t tell me this?!”

Why people always assumed Harry knew stuff was a complete mystery to him.

It wasn’t that he was unintelligent, he really wasn’t despite some loud opinions otherwise, but for some reason everyone seemed to think he had a lot more knowledge about cultural parts of the wizarding world that no one ever bothered to tell him, or even inform him he didn’t know.

Hagrid was his introduction into the magical world.

Hagrid.

He liked Hagrid, but excellent cultural liaison he was not.

No one at Hogwarts was much better.

Every piece of information he had gathered he had to scrape and claw for.

He didn’t have time to spend all summer reading Hogwarts A History like Hermione, he was busy cooking and cleaning for the Dursley’s, and the book was like a thousand pages, he wasn’t as fast a reader as Hermione and he simply didn’t have the time.

If there were a Hogwarts A Cliffnotes, maybe he could try it.

So Hermione’s outraged tone and accusatory look following her shocked gasp, seemed just a mite overboard.

“Hermione dearest, the unicorns.”

It was the calmest rebuke imaginable, and she didn’t even pause in her embroidery, much less look up as she did it, but Hermione heard it and turned approximately the color of a tomato, looking down and murmuring an apology.

Hermione had respect for authority.

Luna somehow had authority.

No one gave it to her, she didn’t take it, she didn’t try to, she simply did.

Harry and Ron were very much grateful for Luna’s calming influence.

Hermione’s excitability, and Luna’s unflappable calm, kind of balanced out.

It was nice.

“You know I’ve been wondering, why don’t they call me Lunatic Lovegood? Lunacy Lovegood could work in a pinch too. It just seems like they could do better. And Harry you can talk to snakes, how fascinating. Do you find they make interesting conversationists?”

How come there were parselmouths, and a whole snake language, but not any other animal languages you could innately know?

Snakes weren’t even a magical creature, not inherently.

If some people could speak pheonix or hippogriff it would make more sense.

Although that did bring another question, do snakes have a universal language?

Can snakes from different continents converse?

At what point were snakes different enough species to not fall under the umbrella of parseltongue?

Cats hissed, as far as she could tell parselmouths couldn’t understand that.

So many interesting questions.

“You mean you guys can’t? It happened at the zoo once, when all the wizard stuff happened I just assumed it was part of that.”

In a way it was.

“No it’s not. It’s actually really rare. Only descendants of Salazar Slytherin have been recorded having it.”

Just not a common part.

Hermione, ever knowledgable, knew of course, 

What was he supposed to do, ask if every instance of accidental magic was normal or actually a super rare trait thought to have died out?

Or if people would have a huge prejudice against it? (If it was Slytherin they’d have to, even he hated Slytherins.)

Because of course, it would be him, who would find a way to be a freak even here.

This time, not even for being the boy who lived, but this.

A freak among freaks, uncle Vernon would be so proud. Or horrified because he had ‘freakish’ foretelling abilities.

Luna did not chide him for not answering her question, he had a lot on his mind.

She’d ask again later.

Ron was having a challenging day.

He didn’t like to think he was close minded, he tried, he really tried.

When he was presented with evidence to the contrary of one of his beliefs, he tried to listen to it rationally, results were mixed but really.

Maybe having a prejudice against a fourth of his school wasn’t the most forward thinking and rational thing, he knew this, but it wasn’t like Malfoy and his cronies weren’t giant gits.

Honestly, if he met one Slytherin, past or present, who wasn’t a prissy blighter than he’d probably change his mind.

As it was there was no immediate need for him to examine his soul about it.

Yes he knew other people could be blighters too, Luna’s general treatment proved that rather definitively, but at least with the other houses he had better odds.

Ron was at heart a simple man, he liked good food, good company, and maybe some exploding snap.

Change was not on his list of preferred items, according to Hermione it came from being so young in such a large family, it might be true, as far as Ron was concerned though it didn’t matter.

He didn’t grudge becoming friends with Luna, even if Luna wasn’t Luna no one deserved to be treated that way, and he wasn’t the type to grudge any kind of friend. 

He also didn’t blame Harry for being a parselmouth, he could control it just as well as Ron could control being a redhead, and he found the preemptive glare Hatt was shooting him mildly offensive.

But today he’d gone to nearly headless Nick’s deathday party, only for Harry to hear a voice and find a petrified cat and a threatening message written in blood on the wall, which they were promptly accused of doing.

Then after Hatt had worked some kind of magic on everyone, and they were eating food he had no idea how Luna had gotten a hold of, the magic hat told them all Harry was a bleeding parselmouth.

Oh and also Salazar Slytherin, the poster child for blood supremacy really wasn’t all that bad.  
News he wasn’t getting from Malfoy, but from the impartial hat who had actually known the bloke.

It was all a bit much.

Luna passed him a cauldron cake silently.

Things could be worse.

Hatt raised a felt eyebrow at Hermione’s thoughtless comment, and Harry’s subsequent face, you didn’t need to be a legilimence to see that boy was spiraling faster than a portkey.

For Merlin’s sake.

Most of the time Hatt chose to forsake tact and manners of all kind, this was a personal (hatenal?) choice, but so many of these kids just lacked the capability.

What had they been teaching these children?

“That’s an urban legend, yes parseltongue can be hereditary but Sallys’ is hardly the only family it can come from. Seriously, how could Sally been recruiting mostly parselmouths for Slytherin in the early days, if they all had to be his family? Sally was not that much of a casanova sorry to say. Who has been teaching you all this nonsense? Honestly Brian and I are going to have a serious chat about a few things let me tell you.”

This was just sad.

He was older and more qualified than Dumbledore and if he had to pull rank he would. (The governors would fall in line, he’d not only been in their heads, but their kids heads.)

Not that he wanted to be headmaster, in fact the job sounded particularly dreadful, and he should know, stuffed into that office most of the year.

But Godric made him promise to look after the old place, a real fan of guilt trips that one, and he could bear it for a little bit if it meant someone in this entire bloody school had the potential to know something.

Honestly, if he was a person he was pretty sure he’d lose brain cells just by breathing the same air as these people.

Thankfully he was not, so he neither had brain cells, nor the ability to breathe.

The mouth was for show, Godric noticed that it kind of creeped people out when he was newly ‘born’ and without it, so he made an adjustment.

(He had no idea how he ate either, some things it was better to just not question.)

Hermione frowned at his slight to her beloved books, but conceded his point.

Mentally anyway.

Her schedule just got much busier.

This all required a lot of research.

There was one thing that had been bugging her since Luna first showed up with the hat which could be addressed however.

(Even Hermione could tell the subject of the basilisk and Harry being a parselmouth was closed for the moment, Harry was nearly catatonic and it was late, it wasn’t like they could do anything about it tonight anyway.)

“Why do you put all the purebloods in Slytherin?”

Not all the purebloods, the better question would be why he wouldn’t put any of the muggleborns in there, although that didn’t seem super hard to figure out so maybe he wasn’t the expert.

Granger asked a lot of questions.

Since most of them were reasonably intelligent, and the girl couldn’t be blamed entirely for her apparent poor education, he allowed it, but it was mildly irritating.

“It started off with Sally, and even when he retired from handpicking them, (retired, stormed off in a fit, eh) he made the valid point that it would be easier for both muggleborns and purebloods to deal with less culture shock by not being suddenly expected to understand the others culture by immediately becoming roommates and sharing a shower with them. After a while I realized that things weren’t going quite to plan, but by then if I put any muggleborns in Slytherin they would have been eaten alive by the students already there, and to fix it I would have had to subject so many children to suffering major prejudice for the greater good and that’s more Brian’s game so I just kind of stuck with it. Besides, basically everyone has the qualities of at least two houses.”

The whole house system was questionable at best.

Hermione hummed thoughtfully, he had a point.

Research.

A lot of research.

Madame Pince was going to be seeing a lot of her in the next few days, even more than usual.

And Filch and Mrs Norris would see none, clearly some discreet checking of the restricted section was necessary, Harry would let her borrow the cloak.

But both Harry and Ron were yawning and blinking sluggishly, and she was admittedly feeling a little tired herself, she could start her research tomorrow.

Luna hummed and nodded in response to no question anyone else could hear, and handed Hermione the finished embroidery before she stood smoothly and offered a hand to Ron and Hermione.(Harry was across from her.)

They took it, mumbled their goodnights, and went their separate ways.

It had been a good day.

Luna thought so anyway.

Everyone else was undecided.


	5. Hat Teacher Meetings Am I right?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Albus has regrets.  
> Hatt has questions.  
> Luna makes a friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, sorry about the like two month wait. I don’t really have an excuse I just didn’t do it.  
> Anyways, this is it, hope y’all had fun.

Gilderoy had a bag packed, he always had a bag packed, plus a few mass hysterical amnesia speeches memorized.

One for the aurors, another for the reporters, and one to announce his new book based on his ‘experience’.

Gilderoy Lockhart had a bag packed, he really wanted to use it.

Teaching at Hogwarts was not going according to plan.

Nothing had been really going according to plan for everyone.

Dumbledore, Snape, Lord Malfoy, even Mcgonnagal’s plan for the school year was down the drain.

The only person who was doing well with their goals at the moment was Professor Trelawney. (Mass hysteria drove people to find her ideas more reasonable.)

Gilderoy Lockhart had a bag packed, Severus Snape had ordered his tombstone around the time he started teaching at Hogwarts, Minerva McGonagall and Fillius Flitwick had an understanding regarding their various pets with each other, Albus Dumbledore was seriously considering retiring, and Sybill  
Trelawney was drinking an unhealthy amount of tea.

Breakfast the next morning was a rather tense affair.

While the people not present at the scene in the corridor last night were being filled in in theatrical stage whispers, the already informed were glaring at either Harry or Draco.  
(Depending upon which side of the fence they landed on.)

Even the head table was more silent than usual, taking their cues from the haggard appearances of Mcgonnagall and Dumbledore, who were hungover and still mildly drunk (and neither Minerva nor Albus were confident that if Snape did fulfill their request for hangover potions he wouldn’t add something extra to it), and Snape and Filch who were busy glowering at the room in general. Trelawney was too busy staring at various cutlery to do anything, Lockhart was still trying to stay relatively unnoticed, Pomfrey and Sprout were having a hushed discussion about medicine, and Flitwick was wondering what he’d missed. (No one ever told him anything.)

As for Harry, he was quite enjoying the quarantine everyone seemed to enforce on him, Ron, Hermione, and Luna, at the moment.

He could hear the mutterings, but no one had been brave enough to say anything to him (the Weasley twins were still asleep) which was all the better in his book.

“Hey Luna, where’s Hattttt?”

Still pretty sure he wasn’t pronouncing that right.

Luna smiled at him though, and it was only forty percent pitying, so he was fine.

“He wanted to sleep in, said he wanted to be fresh for the meeting later.”

So apparently the sorting hat could sleep.

Learn a new thing every day Harry supposed.

Ron, who’d been uncharacteristically deep in thought and quiet for most of the morning, suddenly spoke up.

“I’ve been thinking. It’s got to be Malfoy right? With what he said yesterday and how his family is, they’ve all been in Slytherin for generations you know, it would make sense right?”

Hermione, who’d stayed up even later than the rest of them attempting to do some research with the books she had (if only she’d brought her copy of Hogwarts A History) and was halfway to nodding off in her porridge, started and sat up straighter, looking expectantly at Luna as everyone was.

When exactly Luna became the deciding vote on these things none of them were exactly sure, they couldn’t even blame the hat right now, it just seemed like she’d know.

Luna hummed, and paused in her inventive food combinations for a moment, only to shake her head.

“I wouldn’t think so. It’s not a bad idea Ron, and maybe if it was his father I would believe it, he is after all a member of the Rotfang conspiracy, but Malfoy the younger doesn’t have the patience. If anything last night proves it wasn’t him, if Draco Malfoy was related to Salazar Slytherin in any way, or had found the chamber of secrets, the whole school would know, he’s not exactly the master of subtlety and for all of how Slytherin closes ranks, gossip still makes its way out from there all the time so even if he didn’t announce it to the whole school, it’d get out.”

It was the only thing her roommates talked about really, and even if they disliked her they did share a room, Luna was bound to overhear some things. Especially since people tended to assume she was daft and therefore didn’t try to hide things from her particularly.

Personally her bet was on Pansy Parkinson being the main leak in Slytherin, although it wouldn’t exactly be out of character if it was Malfoy. She’d wait to see how the whole debacle with Millicent Bulstrode and Astoria Greengrass went before she made any real determinations. (She was a journalist, and school gossip was more powerful than most people thought, the least she could do was keep track.)

Ron, who while a little annoyed at having the wind taken out of his sails with his lovely plan to blame Malfoy for this, could recognize the points she made in her argument, blamed his lapse of judgement on a lack of food and sleep, and went away eating even more eagerly than he usually did while consoling himself on the many things he could still blame Malfoy for.

It was a long list so he was back in good spirits relatively quickly.

“I suppose this is what Dobby meant.”

It had been a really long term.

On the scale of weird things to have happened that month alone, it was pretty low down on the list.

Besides, he was in mortal danger? Not exactly a new experience.

Before Hogwarts and the Quirrel/Voldemort debacle it was the Dursley’s and before that it was Voldemort again.

If he ever didn’t feel his life was in mortal danger than that would be much more alarming, a bit of a catch 22 maybe but such was life. (His life anyway.)

After all, it was only paranoia if they weren’t all out to get him.

“Well I still think that was the Malfoys.”

That she would allow, so she nodded and Ron looked very pleased with himself.

“It is a rather interesting element to it.”

It was a puzzle, a good one, old stories and weaknesses intertwining with new, combining to make something greater than the sum of its parts.

Nobody was really sure what to say about that, and seeing as Hermione was once again nodding off into her porridge, Luna’s vague gaze was even more absent than usual, and Ron and Harry were busy making as much use of the banquet as was physically possible.   
The rest of breakfast went on without further discussion, in their little corner of the world anyway.

——————

Sugar quills was the current password for Dumbledore’s office, which seemed somewhat odd to the students seeing as it was a generally frowned upon item. (You’re supposed to be taking a test not giving yourself a sugar rush.)

But of odd things it was yet another low item on the list, so other than a shared look it wasn’t addressed.

They were all in rather contemplative moods anyway, Hatt was preparing his list of demands, Hermione had a list of questions she was revising that she needed to ask Dumbledore, Harry was trying to come up with an articulate defense against any chamber of secrets/heir of slytherin related accusations that may be thrown his way, Luna was working through the story as a whole again, trying to examine it from all angles like her father (and mother) taught her, and Ron was playing mental chess against himself, he was losing.

So when they all filtered up the stairs and into the room there were a few awkward moments of silence.  
Dumbledore had kind of assumed they’d talk first and he’d just go from there, instead it seemed they were not really paying attention to him. This didn’t happen to him very often so he was somewhat taken aback.

He had spent the entire night and day trying to come up with a plan for what to do about the chamber of secrets business, or even just this meeting, (and drinking but really who wouldn’t?) and he had come up with approximately nothing.

Yet somehow, within five seconds of four school children and one rather uppity accessory entering his office he felt like things were not going according to plan.

This did not bode well.

Especially the way the hat was glaring at him menacingly, and Granger had shaken her head and was looking at him with an all too eager investigative gleam in her eyes she usually only got when an essay was assigned, Lovegood wasn’t looking at him but she was looking over his office in a casual way that made him inexplicably nervous, the youngest Weasley was as usual muttering to himself (something about knights?) and Potter had the expression of perpetual fear he usually had when facing any adults, a concerning matter all on its own.

This really did not bode well.

He so wished he could retire.

“We really didn’t do it sir!”

Harry sagged like a puppet with his strings cut after his outburst, the silence had been killing him and he was just sure he was going to expelled, in his experience an attempted defense usually made things worse but he had to do something. Or at least it’d felt like he had to.

Luna, Hermione, and Ron’s attention snapped to Harry suddenly, noticing his obvious distress, and Luna gave him a flower while Hermione murmured nonsense and rubbed his upper arms in the way people do, as Ron awkwardly coughed and patted him on the back.

Hatt’s focus didn’t waver, but the intensity increased quite a bit.

Dumbledore was much too old for this.

He could fake his death, if anyone could do it he could, and he could go somewhere.

A beach maybe.

Aruba was supposed to be nice this time of year.

All times of year really if Flitwick’s pictures from his vacation home were to be believed.

Lucky bastard.

He’d have to let Minerva know of course. She’d figure it out eventually and she was scary when she was angry.

But there was no way Severus was getting a forwarding address.

He’d done what he could with that boy but at some point you just had to admit defeat. He’d go on doing his double agent penitence thing, and keep being a horrendous teacher, the only difference would be him reporting to Minerva. Unfortunately that was the only life left to him.

Plus even before the whole business with Lilly and Voldemort, Severus wasn’t the nicest person to hang out with.

Why he and Lilly were friends were so long was beyond even the great Dumbledore.

He couldn’t exactly fake his death and flee to Aruba at this precise moment though, so back to the business at hand.

“Of course you didn’t my boy, I know that.”

This had just about the opposite effect than he’d been hoping for.

On the one hand, Harry did look much more relaxed, although since it was Harry that wasn’t saying much.

On the other hand, everyone else seemed angrier at him upon his words.

Excepting Luna as usual of course, she was seemingly satisfied with Harry’s wellbeing at the moment and had continued on in her inspection, coming to stop in front of Fawkes’ perch after a few silent moments.

It was exceedingly strange to watch her wander around the office like it was her own, not because of Luna since at this point even Dumbledore had seen enough to expect such things from her, but because of Hatt.

As Luna floated about the room, turning her head this way and that, changing direction seemingly at random, Hatt never stopped glaring at Dumbledore.

Now Hatt’s face (for lack of a better world) was pointed more or less in the same direction as Luna’s body, although slightly to the left.

Hatt also had no pupils, just kind of divots that got creepier the longer you looked at, or even thought about, his eyes.

So the way Dumbledore felt like he finally understood how muggles found it creepy when portraits eyes followed them around the room, (he’d grown up a wizard pictures not moving was what was creepy) through Luna’s head somehow too, was indeed odd.

“I don’t suppose anyone here can understand bird?”

Phoenixes specifically but the applicable language barriers were still uncertain.

Understand wasn’t the quite the right word, anyone could understand a bird. Or any kind of animal really.

But she felt if she asked the more accurate question of if anyone had an innate and rare ability that allowed them to understand animal noises as words and sentences in their native language, there would be a lot more questions, none of them the ones she wanted.

Before anyone could respond, Fawkes coughed, something Harry was pretty sure he’d never seen a bird do before, and burst into flames.

Well, Luna supposed, that didn’t need much translation.

Except apparently it did since Harry was hyperventilating.

A long discussion regarding Harry’s relatives was necessary.

“Don’t worry Harry it’s a phoenix, this is natural, sometimes things need to shed off all the old excess to grow anew.”

This was said by Luna, who in a rare moment of outward lucidity, was staring at Dumbledore rather steadily, infecting her dreamy absent words with a menace and sense of dread Dumbledore was unaccustomed to.

There was a certainty about Luna, that was absolutely terrifying.

“Like snakes shedding their skins. Speaking of, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, were you aware there was a basilisk frolicking about the school? And really Brian, what’s with the living to inanimate transfigurations?”

He really should have faked his death before they got here.

Albus Dumbledore had many regrets over his long life as any would, but an inordinate amount had amassed over this last month or so.

Now the last shot was unnecessary, but Hatt was still pretty pleased about it.

Ron also was rather chuffed. Any leftover hero worship for Dumbledore was trumped by his newfound veneration for Luna and Hatt, as well as his general appreciation of a good put down.

Even Harry and Hermione had to suppress a snicker.

Something about seeing the headmaster cower like a scolded child in the face of a hat and an eleven year old, combined with the disdainful dismissive way he said ‘Brian’, was almost too much to bear.

Luna didn’t even try, and in a rare moment of age appropriate reaction giggled.

Well it was that combined with Dumbledore’s longing look to the locked cabinet she had an idea of the contents of.

Then she reached out and picked up the newly young Phoenix, with gentle hands and comforting cooing.

“Name? Sex? Age? Treat preferences? Birthday? Hobbies? Favorite color?”

Luna never ever raised her voice, not to cast spells, not to get peoples attention, not to make a point, not anything.

This was not an exception, but there was this thing she could do to her voice.

See, Luna never raised her voice, Luna never needed to raise her voice, Luna made the rest of the room silent.  
Not in a literal way all the time, (although yeah sometimes) but metaphorically speaking.

And her patience with Headmaster Dumbledore was somewhat thin on the ground, plus she’d never gotten to meet a Phoenix before and it was exceedingly rude to not know anything about who you were talking to. 

Since she couldn’t speak whatever, no doubt lovely, language phoenixes (or at least this one) did and admittedly, she’d been focused on the crumple haired snorcack lately and couldn’t quite remember all of her lessons on phoenixes, she had to rely on Dumbledore for any pertinent information on her hopefully soon to be friend.

Well, actually she could have just asked Hatt, but for once Luna was not in a giving mood, and you could tell a lot about a person based on how they treat their pets, and you could tell how the treated their pets based on what they knew about them.

“Umm, Fawkes, and he seems rather fond of fudge flies, the rest I don’t know. A basilisk you say?”

The last sentence more resembled a squeak than anything anyone had heard Dumbledore say before.

In fairness to his lackluster response regarding Fawkes’ interests, Dumbledore was a little hungover, and he was kind of stuck on the parselmouth thing. Plus it was hard to think coherently with both the hat and Luna looking at him like that.

Luna scowled slightly, the barest narrowing of her eyes and downturning of her lips which had roughly the same effect an avalanche would in the quiet room.

How could someone know so little about their pet?

It was quite disrespectful.

Before this Luna had almost no opinion to speak of in regards to Dumbledore, her father was rather a big fan but Xenophilius was...not the best judge of a lot of things, and since her father was compromised, all the other news and history in the wizarding world was dreadfully partisan, and she’d never met the man she’d been more or less reserving her judgement.

(Luna was a fair minded girl, she knew she didn’t know the full story of the events last year, even if the trio had told her all they could, so she reserved judgement on that as well. No matter how incompetent and recklessly handled it appeared to be.)

He was not doing too well so far.

“Yes a basilisk, might wanna invest in some roosters. Do try to keep up Brian we have a lot to go over and I’ve spent enough time in this kitschy nightmare you call an office. I swear it’s a wonder we’re not all blind just being in here. It should be illegal to sell one person that much fuchsia.”

Dumbledore made a wounded sound and Ron started wheezing.

Hermione probably would have laughed guiltily if she wasn’t thoroughly distracted by trying to remember what range of color vision birds had in general.

If they could see color it would be interesting to research what colors Fawkes (and birds in general) preferred.

Hermione would never have guessed it, but Luna was thinking something along the same lines.

She couldn’t really see his plumage properly, the spell that killed her mother gave her rather unusual color blindness.

It was secondary colors she had trouble with, green, orange, purple, and instead of being the grey or mud brown usually attributed to such things, when her eyes were confronted with one of those colors it tended to fluoresce a violent neon yellow.

The Weasley clan all together was nigh blinding.

So to her he more resembled a baby parrot, or perhaps a baby pigeon who had an unfortunate run in with some dye.

He was a beautiful bird though, and Luna in her usual ‘what do you mean the glass is half empty? I have a jug of pumpkin juice right here and oh dear that’s just the wrackspurts talking have a biscuit’ way, liked to think that the color thing just helped her appreciate things even more.

Literally no one could see things like Luna.

So no one else could appreciate Fawkes’ feathers quite like her.

Dumbledore was pretty sure he shouldn’t be letting a hat talk to him like this, much less in front of students. While his all powerful reputation was tiresome, losing it in such a way as this would be disastrous on many levels, and really, he was Headmaster of Hogwarts, former Master of Death, Supreme Mugwump and Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, he was past the point in his life of critique via headgear. (If there ever was such a point.)

But he was still stuck on the Basilisk thing, and he was very very afraid of the way the hat and Lovegood were looking at him, or not looking at him in Lovegood’s case but that was worse somehow.

“A basilisk? In the school? This school?”

Adults were, in Luna’s opinion, rather slow.

Children could be slow too, but at least there was less of a pretense of knowledge.

With adults the assumption was supposed to be basically any adult over any child, but things just didn’t work that way.

Luna had not explicitly shared this opinion with her friends, but they were beginning to think it anyway.

Most of Ron’s potential for patent faith in adults was destroyed by having so many older siblings. It was hard to believe someone was to be respected simply for their age when he had siblings so much older than him.  
(If Percy and Charlie could be prefects than really their system had to be flawed.)

It was easier for Harry, adults had never helped before, not with the Dursley’s not with anything. He’d hoped things would be different in the wizarding world, but that didn’t seem to be the case.

For Hermione it was a tougher pill to swallow.

But she took safety very seriously, that of her friends and the entire school.

As well as education and honestly, what was up with Snape and Lockhart?

Dumbledore’s reaction was not helping with any of their uncertainty.

“Have you actually lost the plot? Brian if you have I will be very vexed, I like to avoid Lucy Malfoy being right whenever physically possible.”

A real git that one.

Not much better at home either based on what little of Malfoy the younger’s head he got a peak into.

The wizarding world needed much more therapy than it got.

He needed to have a chat with Luna about what to do with the Malfoy boy.

The kid was an insufferable git, but so were ninety nine point nine percent of twelve year olds, especially sheltered ones raised in an extremely dysfunctional and mildly abusive family.

At this rate Hatt was going to have to figure out if hats could legally become foster parents and take out a mortgage.

Probably he could.

Maybe not all hats, but him.

He had a thousand yard stare perfected by a thousand years of living in a school.

(No place collected idiots quite like a place of learning.)

“This is a lot to process you bloody blustering bonnet!”

Luna, ever the journalist, was somewhat impressed with the alliteration.

But she was more annoyed by the shouting and the swearing, honestly Luna didn’t much mind either way with swearing, Xenophilious didn’t hold with censoring children’s view of the world (and even if he did he probably wouldn’t have remembered enough to enforce it), and as a journalist Luna knew how malleable words could be.

Hermione however, looked like Dumbledore had just kicked a kneazle in front of her, Ron looked rather offended, (he didn’t hold with people insulting his friends) and Harry had quite visibly flinched.

Besides, Hatt was her friend and Dumbledore was upsetting the unicorns.

“Headmaster please, my parents were part of the order, and my father has always spoken kindly of you. It would be dreadfully upsetting for him to hear differently.”

Xenophilious was vague and flighty, but he also didn’t handle change well.

This news would offset him quite considerably, and while she didn’t tell her father everything she also didn’t like keeping things from him.

She’d mention the meeting, but she didn’t want to have to mention Dumbledore being so...unstable, and she would have to if things kept going the way they did.

Merlin, if things kept going the way they did she wouldn’t just tell her father she’d tell the entire world.

A quibbler article would be only the beginning if he made any of her friends look like that again.

Dumbledore paled considerably at Luna’s concise, calm, speech.

Hatt decided to be merciful, just this once.

He had spent quite a lot of time with Dumbledore after all.

It had bred a certain latent fondness, of the like you have of the class pet.

It wouldn’t do him much good, but it was what it was.

“Hey Brian? Before you say anything, I’d like you to think carefully about the order in which I would rank the people in this room, and where you are on it. Spoiler alert, the bird is beating you by a mile.”

He would also do well to remember that he has spent years hanging around his office while he conducted whatever puppetmaster, war general shenanigans he wished to, without a single thought to the sentient mind reading hat who could hear everything.

But he can’t give him too many hints.  
It would take all the sport out of it.

“Look Brian here’s the deal, right now there are only two possible interpretations of your behavior these last dozen or so years, either you are unforgivably evil, or unforgivably stupid. So tell me, which one are you?”

It was at that moment Dumbledore realized that just because the hat was quiet, and even had his eyes closed, didn’t mean he was asleep.

Suddenly, to the surprise of most of the people in the room, Dumbledore looked very very ashamed and very very old.

And Hermione remembered that she’d read he was born in an entirely different century and was in fact one hundred and eleven years old, and how frail her grandparents had been before they died, decades younger than Dumbledore today.

Dumbledore sighed and started rubbing his forehead, looking searchingly at the empty (at his request, this meeting didn’t need any more of an audience than it already did) portraits of Hogwarts past headmasters like it would answer his questions.

It didn’t and he sighed again.

“I’d prefer to think the former. But truly, what would you have me do?”

There was something going on here that they hadn’t been told.

Harry decided to just add it to the list and wasn’t too fussed about it. Ron hadn’t had so many older siblings without learning how to tell when to ask and when to exercise plausible deniability. And Hermione though brimming with questions, for once recognized that it wasn’t the time.

(She’d never seen Hatt so serious and it was borderline spine chilling.)

Luna was back to petting Fawkes, Hatt seemed to have everything under control and he really was quite lovely bird.

It seemed Dumbledore didn’t spend as much time taking care of him as he aught.

Birds (and all creatures really) didn’t need just food, they needed love, especially magical ones.

And well...she didn’t bring a pet with her to school.

Most of the ones at home either weren’t acknowledged as existing, or wouldn’t be happy being forced to live in a stuffy castle.

But Fawkes was used to it, and could come and go, and Dumbledore couldn’t just say it was dangerous for the children seeing as he’d been keeping him at the school for as long as anyone could remember.

Of course it was up for Fawkes to decide whether he wanted to spend some time with her, but she’d never met an animal she didn’t like, and she’d never met an animal that didn’t like her either.

She wondered whether Hatt could read the minds of non humans.

So many questions to answer.

“That Brian, is what I’d like to discuss with you.”

Finally they were getting somewhere.

Regretfully, he gave Luna a small mental nudge.

While he was of the strict opinion that she was smarter than Dumbledore, and probably the whole staff put together, but nevertheless there were some things it was incumbent on an adult to handle, no matter how mature the child.

He’d brief them later, editing out all the copious swearing he was planning on doing, but for now he needed to have a chat with the wayward headmaster with no innocent ears in the way.

Luna set down Fawkes, and put Hatt gently on the headmaster’s desk without a single thing falling off either the desk or the hat in an extraordinary feat of level hands.

She then picked up Fawkes, bundled him up in one of the scarves adorning Hatt that she’d taken off, (pheonixes needed a certain amount of heat and when they were just reborn the temperature regulation could be a little iffy) and turned towards the rest of her party.

“How about we show Draco Malfoy Fawkes here? He’s my cousin you know, through my mother’s side.”

Hatt’s grumblings about the state of the Malfoy family dinners were not as quiet as he’d supposed.

Besides, he was her cousin and who could turn down spending time with a Phoenix? Especially one as lovely as Fawkes?

Also Malfoy had been avoiding her of late, and she felt bad.

He was after all her cousin, and Luna was uncomfortably low on relatives.

Dumbledore was surprised to see the transformation in the group’s entire attitude.

They looked like kids again, instead of the defensive adults ready to take on the world if need be they’d been before.

He really was unforgivably stupid wasn’t he?

Hermione’s lips were pursed, and she was torn between asking why Luna would want to show Fawkes to a prat like Malfoy, and asking whether she could hold him. (Partially for scientific reasons and partially because he was so fluffy and she may have been the smartest witch of her year but she was still human.)

Harry made a sour face but was pretty sure Luna had his reasons and really wanted to get out of this office.

Ron stomped his foot stubbornly and looked at Luna in that combination of pleading and mild resentment usually reserved for mothers.

“He’s a git.”

True.

But too many people were gits in Luna’s experience to write them all off forever.

And his father was part of the rotfang conspiracy, someone should warn him. (She doubted any of the Malfoy family actually read the Quibbler.)

“Ninety nine percent of eleven and twelve year olds are gits.”

The only reason Harry and Luna were so well off was because of all the negligence. That got a kid to grow up fast.

Ron and Hermione were behind, but learning.

He’d say more about why Malfoy acted the way he did, but any real details about his home life would be violating hat student confidentiality.

Hatt was a hat of honor after all.

Besides, it was something important they’d all have to learn without his help.

Because sometimes, the greatest ambition a person can have is to survive another day.

Luna nodded sagely and Ron grumbled, but he did trust Luna and Hatt might have a point, even if he still freaked Ron out a bit.

The children filed out of the room, on their way to find and forcibly befriend an unaware Draco Malfoy.

Before Luna, who had exited last in her gentle herding manner, made it through the door into the stairwell she heard one last thing.

“So Brian, let’s talk about two things: communication, and child endangerment.”

It was going to be a long chat.

It was okay though, Luna knew where the Slytherin dorms were and it would take a while to get rid of the wrackspurt infestation.

Fawkes, Ron, Harry, and Hermione could help, and Hatt would catch up.

It had been two months and Luna had made six friends (counting Professor Flitwick who still wore his butterbeer cork necklace with dignity, and Fawkes of course) and seven had always been Luna’s lucky number.

Hogwarts needed a lot of help, but Luna felt like she could manage it with seven friends.

She could probably do it with one.

But seven were nice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here are two random things of Hatt reacting to later things in canon.
> 
> “He had a rather big thing for your mother when he was young, and she liked him too, whether it was platonic or not is up for debate, (I read her mind when she was eleven, she only had platonic feelings) after that it gets a little fuzzy what happened but whatever it was it wasn’t good.”
> 
> “What do you mean no?”  
> “I mean no, I sorted that boy remember? Do you really think I would go against generations of Slytherin Blacks for a Gryffindor without good reason? Not only do I take my duties seriously but I also love getting the hat trick, so to speak, with families. That boy was Gryffindor through and through, and even though he’d barely met James he was devoted to the lout, if I had had a stomach I would have thrown up.”  
> He could eat but he didn’t have a stomach. (No he didn’t understand how it worked either.)


End file.
